How do I prevent MySQL from updating column with empty string?

Question

I have a form to update details of a user and they do not have to fill in every field. Because of that, it will be passing an empty string to the database via POST. This is my query:

$q = "UPDATE mdl_user SET firstname='$fname', lastname='$lname', email='$email',
      address='$address', city='$city', school='$school', phone1='$phone'
      WHERE id='$uid'";

Is there a way for MySQL to check if for example $fname is an empty string and if it's empty don't update that field?

If not then how should I go about doing this in PHP?

Answer 1

You can use IF statement for each field you need to check. For example :

$q = "UPDATE mdl_user SET firstname=IF(LENGTH('$fname')=0, firstname, '$fname'), lastname=IF(LENGTH('$lname')=0, lastname, '$lname'), email=IF(LENGTH('$email')=0, email, '$email'), address='$address', city='$city', school='$school', phone1='$phone' WHERE id='$uid'";

Answer 2

I would do this

<?php
if ($fname) {
 $fname = "firstname='$fname',";
} else {
 $fname = '';
}
$q = "UPDATE mdl_user SET $fname lastname='$lname', email='$email', address='$address', city='$city', school='$school', phone1='$phone' WHERE id='$uid'";
?>

But you should really be worried about how insecure your code is.